[codemonkey]

In general, people are not trying to patent entire pieces of software. Indeed, it's difficult to understand how such a large work could reduce to mathematics. Rather, people are trying to patent very specific algorithms and methods that can be used to make a larger piece of software, and it's easier to see that those do reduce to mathematics.

Knuth argued well against patenting that: http://progfree.org/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt